Irish White Privilege......Yeah

Yeah, maybe OR maybe there's a majority of us still uninfected with this malaise.

The actual real multiaccounts are all busy on the refugee thread earning their daily bread reposting shyte and denying reality.

Ah now - I wasnt saying they were multiaccounts. I know you are a real dude Packrat.

I've no idea, I don't keep up to date with secondary schools curriculum. My post was directed as the other poster who essentially said it shouldn't be taught to 9 year olds. I was just pointing out even if it was being taught in SPHE it would be a minimum of 12/13 year olds.

It should not be introduced at all as a concept with regards Ireland.

The only places it has real meaning is in discussions about US and US history, French\British\Dutch\German colonalism, South African apartheid regime.

It has no place in Irish context and makes a mockery of our history.

The problem is we have been adopting concepts directly from America and some now seem to believe their history is the same as ours.

This is what you get when you don't know your own fooking history.

Of course the clowns that will gladly add this into the curriculum are the very same ones that have turned the teaching of history into an exercise in passage comprehension and joint the dots.

THE CONSULTATION PROCESS has begun on the first major revamp of the primary school curriculum in 25 years.

A key focus of the new curriculum is teaching about difference and understanding other cultures, as Irish schools have become more diverse.

SPHE

Wellbeing will include an update to the relationships and sexual education programme to operate as a precursor to the new Junior Cycle curriculum, which garnered controversy when it was first implemented last September. 

The consultation phase for the proposed curriculum is to be completed by June

https://www.thejournal.ie/primary-schools-curriculum-education-6317414-Mar2024/

Downplay, deflect, the usual.

I'm not downplaying anything. It's a dumb thing to get worked up about, the entire curriculum is not about white privilege, it's confected outrage as usual from one word in a 24 page document.

Education shouldn't change? So we should still be teaching children that the Earth is flat and at the centre of the universe. Sounds like a great idea.

As society changes and evolves education needs to follow suit. 25 years since the last major change is ludicrous and the system needs updating.

Do I have this right so - education should not educate? Because that is in essence what you said.

There is definitely an element that have jumped the shark in the last few years

From the article quoted previously by another poster. A key focus of the new curriculum is teaching about difference and understanding other cultures, as Irish schools have become more diverse.

Our schools and are society as a whole are far more diverse than they were 25 years ago and teaching children about this is extremely valuable.

Below is the Sex Ed video I and thousands of others were shown in Primary school when in 5th and 6th class. Do you think that this is still relevant today?

As I said, you continue to use "cock" 'balls" and "children" in a single sentence to elicit an emotional response, when in essence the discussion that started on this thread was about including consideration of difference and what impacts those differences may have on thier lives as part of a particular element of a particular subject and not about trans at all.

That seems to be what it comes down to these days, challenge any of the new conservative ideas and immediately be met with "trans, cock, balls, children, grommer" because ultimately their underlying ideology is built on a pillar of sand and the only thing they can resort to is the hot wedge issue of the day to try and elicit an emotional response and deflect for the absence of any real substance.

But while on the whole trans debate, what is so bad teaching children that there are people who identify differently and also teaching them about the biology of male female reproduction. And is it so difficult to see that they are two completely different things. Gender identity and sexuality are not related.

And I say this as someone who doesn't understand trans identity and doesn't really believe that the many of those who identify as trans actually have gender dysmorphia and actually believe that the problem could be better attacked by addressing the gender stereotypes and expectations associated with male and female, eg. having society recognise that it is perfectly normal for a male to wear makeup and a dress if they chose. But i don't have the expertise to pass judgement on individuals choices so as long as they are not harming others, I acknowledge and let them peruse their lives ( giving you an icky feeling is not harming others by the way)

Irish people were no more "white" than jews were "white".

I remember when I worked in the US first a few decades ago, I was called greenback etc and was fully expected to be a scrounging thieving untrustworthy gombeen. There were jobs I was not given despite being more than qualified, I was treated differently in shops/restaurants as soon as I opened my mouth and they heard the accent. I distinctly remember the US people treating a contracting engineer hailing from london as if he must know what he was talking about, even though he was the biggest clown going, and didn't value my opinion as highly, even assuming I reported to him. His opinion bore more weight simply because of his accent (call it whiteness if you want).

This is what privilege means in day to day life. It's not about being guilty about your background, it's about trying to recognise when that bias is happening subconsciously to others. It's really easy to see it when you're on the crappy end of it, but not easy if you are getting that bias in your favour.

Today , there is still some of that attitude towards the Irish around in the older US and UK generation, but in general, thanks to Ireland itself developing hugely, and also to millions of hardworking, well-educated Irish people representing us worldwide for decades, that attitude has changed a lot. I'm not naieve enough to think the skin colour wasn't a visual advantage to turning that bias around as well. Most US and european people can't tell a Ghananese person from an Ethiopian, from a Nigerian, from a Namibian. They have a tougher mountain to climb.

We can do our part by learning a little bit about their experience.

The logic being "I'm white and I'm privileged, therefore all white people are as privileged as me".

User name certainly checks out for this one.

The only thing that can make people happy and well adjusted is money?

I'm delighted that they're changing things. Society has evolved vastly over the last 25 years, so of course the primary system should evolve too.

Out of interest, why do you think it's rubbish? At the end of the day — even base level acceptance that you've had certain advantages (and disadvantages) in life versus another person or cohort of persons is a form of acknowledging privilege. Even when I was young, you were taught to be grateful for certain things — which is a simple form of privilege acceptance. The difference nowadays is that the conversation has developed beyond simple gratefulness towards actually critically thinking about how certain things you are grateful for are things others around you might not benefit from — and also realising that there are things you might never even have been conscious of.

Why do you see this as rubbish?

Dont assume people are born privileged, based on race, sex, colour, money, education or anything like that.

A friend from college was born to a rich family in Foxrock. We used to all envy him and I guess we thought he was privileged. What we didnt know was that being born to rich parents all sounds good when you are just looking at someone else and seeing what you want to see.

Turns out his rich father was abusing him and his sisters ever since they were children. Id say at the end of the day, he was not born into privilege at all.

I think there's a confusion here between financial/societal privilege and being loved. A working class family can be loving and happy, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable for young Tarquin from Foxrock, or wherever, to walk into a job thanks to his family's connections or to friends made at his expensive school, even if his father was an absolute sh1t and his mother a barely functioning alcoholic.

It's much like saying that money doesn't buy happiness: no of course it doesn't, but I've also heard that phrase completed with "but it does make unhappiness easier to bear".

I think we need to be careful not to end up justifying social inequalities on the grounds that those benefiting from them might be unhappy on the inside. Well, so might lots of people who don't have their financial privileges either. So what?

(None of which is really relevant to the question of whether the Irish have benefited from "white privilege" anyway, even assuming that exists. But "don't assume people are privileged, even when you can clearly see that they are privileged" is too disingenuous not to be questioned. "Don't confuse money with happiness", sure - but privilege is a fairly objective thing, and shouldn't be dismissed as a factor in people's lives just because someone can still be sad despite having it.)